"Do you do yoga?"

If you get injured- shot or otherwise- while running, keep running. Most people survive wounds. Most wounds are psychologically, not physically, incapacitating. You may be killed. You may bleed out. DO NOT give up. Not even if you are shot. –Rory Miller



Friday evening BJJ, Bellevue.

Side control  to scarf, throw your leg over opponent's head  and grab your own lapel, trapping opponent's arm. Place your other hand on the mat, then knee, then turn and armbar (the foot closest to opponent's feet is under hir back). Little Prof Herbert stays amazingly tight throughout- he's so close to the guy that he's practically scootching underneath him.

Same, but opponent defends armbar by joining hands. Pull your feet out one at a time and cross them over top of hir arm. Bicep slicer(!)

Then switch to a grab-your-own-wrist grip and roll towards opponent's head to break the grip. That one I learned from Carlos some time ago and have actually effectively used, along with a foot on the bicep to pry at the arm.

Next: I know there's a name for the keylock when the opponent's palm is on the mat by hir hip, but I don't know the name (no one ever names techniques here). Anyhow, you're in side control going for that, and the opponent grabs hir own belt or gi tail to defend. The arm closest to hir feet, place that elbow on the mat and your palm on your ear. thread your other hand through and grab the bicep of THAT arm (this took some wiggling, for me). Now move to NS and kick your trainling leg under in a sit-out. KEEP elbow on the mat (this is counterintuitive, but the prof corrected me on this specifically and it changed EVERYTHING). Once in position, you barely have to lift in order to finish a shoulder lock.

Positional sparring from side control. Then one roll with Kevin and one with a good blue belt guy I've worked with a couple times. As we slapped hands to start- him drenched in sweat and puffing like a locomotive- he commented wonderingly that I wasn't even out of breath. Kevin and I had just had a long, lively, competitive, technical roll. I asked blue belt guy if he did yoga. He was that flexible, esp for a guy. He said no, but that he'd done lots of MA and always worked on his flexibility.

I seem to be moving more and setting up- or at least threatening- more subs lately. It seems like a slow, meandering improvement. I'll take it.

I put on some music last night while making the cat food. Found out that my CD player has bought the farm. Tape player still works, although will not rewind. Sigh. Last week I organized most of my art supply boxes, and I have my tables set up now... so I can start working on projects any time. I also churned out three pages on my book today- which I haven't worked on in a long time. Frustratingly, as I make a few tentative moves to break out of creative deep-freeze, my mind immediately starts hamster-wheeling on past trauma events (Autumn '11). I really hope those thought processes are not mentally associated with the book (although I started serious concrete work on that right after the trauma, to try to divert myself- I'm going to be really vexed if that's the case). The alternative theory, of course, is that *ANY* venture out of robotic day to day "enduring life" and into a creative "LIVING life" mode causes my subconscious to lunge up reflexively like Pavlov's Demon Dog to sabotage me with toxic thought processes. I am my own worst enemy. It kinda makes me want to put the art away and just go back into zombie zone. Seriously, it's like I can't allow myself to feel pleasure and enjoyment (in art) without serving up a load of emotional garbage to make sure it's tainted. Either feel nothing at all, or open the door that lets acute pain back into the space.  I mean, just look at this paragraph. This happened because I sang along with 2 cassette tapes and wrote three pages of fiction. This is how I get. I don't know if it's worth it.

Problem is, my MA, my artistry, and my spirituality are all fused together. I can make some progress on MA while in endurance mode... you just have to keep going through the motions... but it is slow and crippled.

I am going to get all my hair cut off tomorrow. Looking forward to being able to get on the mat without that sweaty swim cap wrapped around my noggin for a while. I'm thinking about getting a Marine cut next month right before PSG. If I got a Marine cut and dropped ten pounds, I don't think my Evil Twin and I would be able to tell OURSELVES apart.